Zebra's approach to participation brings together the best of PA, which has been used throughout the world for more than a quarter of a century, our solution focused approach, our emphasis on good listening, our commitment to promoting equality and inclusion, and our strong belief that the purpose of participation is to bring about change. We've called it PA4Change; its effective, rigorous and surprisingly simple

PA stands for “Participatory Appraisal”, but most people find this confusing and a bit of a mouthful, so we just call it PA.

The starting position for PA4Change is that people are experts in their own lives, interests and needs. 

From the perspective of the service provider, PA4Change requires a commitment to listen and respond to the views and perspectives of people involved. It offers a clear process for ensuring and promoting inclusion, facilitating dialogue and generating solutions. Thanks to PA's long history as a participatory research method it has an emphasis on validating findings and ensuring that all views are heard. Our experience of training and supporting people to use PA4Change has demonstrated that it is a solid and successful approach for getting to solutions that people themselves have decided upon, understand and want to be involved in for the long term.

PA4Change 

• is inclusive, enabling different perspectives to be shared and valued

• encourages sharing of information, experiences and learning

• focuses on what works, on individual and group strengths, resources and aspirations

• uses a range of creative, flexible tools to enable people to speak in their own words and in their own space, to voice their concerns and to think about how things can be improved

• builds capacity as all those involved learn a wide range of new skills

• leads to sustainable changes for the better in how decisions are made and how services are delivered.